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Why the community is so sceptical of everything riot does.

rossmorr··225 votes·9,616 views

Their outright refusal to go back on something they have done.

I have just been looking at the leona changes discussion with meddler and everyone is shaming the idea of "if it isn't broke don't fix it", now i actually understand why that philosophy isn't a good one, the reason i don't want riot to fix something that isn't broken however is because i know that if they actually do break leona then they won't go back on their decisions, i would happily bet good money, that the leona changes going through will not be reverted, even if they do become problematic.

Also i would have so much more respect for them as a company if they could revert decisions based on their mistakes, and i also wouldn't mind any changes they make because i know they will either be positive or they will be gone soon.

An obvious example is reworked mordekaiser: when they said they were reworking him people were nervous because they knew that if his new direction wasn't positive then he would be shafted and be a shadow of what he used to be (which wasn't actually broken). It has been a clear example of riot being absolutely unable to reverse changes they made completely, and has actually made them, as a company, appear childish and ignorant.

(EDIT: given the amount of attention that this post has recieved i decided to make a video in which i communicate all of my points, i'm no big time youtuber, i just wanted to make clear what exactly i'm trying to say with this post and back it up a little: https://youtu.be/zEOHHWoZrkE)

193 Comments

L0ve Is Blue63 votes

if they actually do break leona then they won't go back on their decisions

R.I.P

Velkoz Zyra Mordekaiser Fiora Skarner

Very Hard Engage51 votes

zyra Q change i can live with, the plants have vastly improved AI. i think she does slightly less damage overall because of Q change. but i can live with less burst in favor of NEW PASSIVE AND GOD SEND MOVEMENT SPEED!!!!!

vel koz i cant even tell the difference, i played lots both before and after and its largely the same.

skarner is just a big "wtf" i cant even. i do agree that was negative overall.

MisterShameless3 votes

Wait, what's wrong with Vel'koz?

Ronan Samurai2 votes

Mitigated most of his kit's damage to his ult, which in turn deals a huge amount of TRUE DAMAGE.

Guy Fox Teemo7 votes

Which actually got half revereted.

TotalJerk4 votes

I don't think that's the problem. The problem is that they shifted his damage to his passive creating a paradigm where he either tickles from one spell, or violates your anus if he lands 3.

Desolas Arterius10 votes

I think the Zyra and Velkoz changes were pretty good. They play a little more smoothly last time I tried them since the update/saw them played.

I dont play Morde or Fiora so I can't say much about them.

But oh lord am I sad about Skarner :'< He's one of my favorite junglers, and right now his kit just seems so meh. Mostly the mini game that really makes him fall off or feel boring. Really hope they fix that soon. Dont want to sound whiny or anything, but I'm definitely disappointed with Skarners changes and how they wont fix it >_< Maybe they're icing him till he gets a rework/update, but who knows...

And dont even get me started on Eve - RIPitem 3070 Evelynn

Elikain6 votes

Eve is slotted for a full VGU in the future. As an ex Eve main, i am preparing to welcome the changes with widely open arms.

Desolas Arterius2 votes

Oh yeah I'm well aware of her VGU. I meant back in the day when she was getting tons of changes seasons prior before Riot announced she was being ice-boxed to get a full VGU :P I'm waiting to see it, but until then I will still be sad at her current state.

Her splash art though. 10/10

Elikain4 votes

Her splash completely captures her personality and thematic. Riot certainly knows how to make quality splashes. I am currently waiting for Morgana's and Miss Fortune's splashes. They are gonna be neat. :)

Desolas Arterius1 votes

I'm personally waiting for all of Sona's splash arts to be updated. She's my bae, so I can't wait for some artwork love to be sent her way.

For Morg I'm more excited to see a model update on her than a splash. I think her splash is pretty decent for now, but man her model needs some love. But her Blademistress splash. 10/10 would make wallpaper again.

Elikain2 votes

Yea, Morgana is my bae too (first level 7 mastery) and i'd love for her to receive a model update. A long time ago, Riot did update her VFX and her model was slightly changed but ultimately, her wings on Exiled Morgana, Blade Mistress and Blackthorn are just terrible looking.

Even though i've completely got used to her looks, i'd definitely like if they spiced it up to their standards. I really like how she looks right now so i'd be content for an update, not a redesign. Her dress needs some physics :D It really looks like an iron curtain based on how it moves.

Melledoneus7 votes

They ruined Fiora not because she feels worse to play, but she feels worse to play AGAINST.

Seriously, she can potentially two shot tanks even if they have 800 armor and 10k HP. That's almost impossible to reach as a tank, and she can still burst it down just as quick.

And now the only item that countered it is now not going to. RIP item 3140

Wyrmblade28 votes

Original Fiora was awful to play against, I absolutely hated those invulnerable tower dives. Even as a tank player I'm okay with her new ult; having some time where I can be killed easier is good as long as it isn't all the time (Vayne)

The real failure was the visuals and lore. Riot had an entire separate idea of who Fiora is and what she represents from the playerbase. They completely changed her face, forgot defining features that identified her as a character like the hair in front of her eyes, took away her fancy armor and cloak, and gave her a boring and tired "arranged marriage/hurr look at me I'm a girl I could beat any of you silly boys" backstory.

RG Velean3 votes

After the new patch which gave Vel the ability to stack his passive with his ult again, he's basically just the same as he was before, just does more true damage now.

kile1473 votes

Which is fine, it's cemented him more as an anti-MR mage.

Arakadia15 votes

R.I.P Swain

They've changed his playstyle so much.... they broke him and now I must pay for it... my main, Swain...

stealthfox944 votes

[{quoted}](name=Lemon Graber,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bZZN8QMu,comment-id=0000,timestamp=2016-06-17T15:37:21.032+0000)

R.I.P

Velkoz Zyra Mordekaiser Fiora Skarner

Not all of those changes where bad. Although the Vel ones certainly weren't necessary.

DeynaTaggerung5 votes

Zyra is amazing and always has been amazing. Her new passive much better fits her thematic and the rework also fixed her plant AI(dear god it was abysmal before). She might be a little bit strong right now but her winrate is still only 53% right now so it's not too bad

PapaGreg2124 votes

Junglers post (good) cinderhulk should have gotten their nerfs reverted. Same with post devourer junglers. It's as if they forgot that they did these nerfs in the first place

The Yetii Rider15 votes

{quoted}

Junglers post (good) cinderhulk should have gotten their nerfs reverted. Same with post devourer junglers. It's as if they forgot that they did these nerfs in the first place

Nunu didn't get his health scaling back (even though ARAM and Dominion don't have Cinderhulk at all).

Instead, he got a lower CD on his Iceball and a higher slow at low ranks. It's ridiculous.

Voluug133 votes

The higher slow is particulary silly. It slow caps extremely easy.

Dengeden1 votes

Oh yes, that's definitely the problem with Nunu, he gets blown up too easily. You people....

kile1474 votes

It's not that he's not tanky enough, it's that their changes left him in a worse state so they buffed a different area of his kit which now makes him feel more oppressive.

Dengeden1 votes

If Nunu wants to slow you, he'll slow you. He isn't more oppressive with a stronger Q, what are you saying?

kile1474 votes

He can perma-slow you now with the buffs. He couldn't before

Electric Buyers15 votes

This is a touchy subject though.

Riot as a company can't say, "Yes we heard you don't like such and such changes, so we are changing it back the way it used to be." If that happens, then we would know we could bully them into decisions that we don't even know are bad. Riot does revert things, but with a long drown out explanation of how they found the problem. People do in fact tend to overreact but it makes sense. Case in point, Riot saw that Vel' Koz ult not applying stacks was dumb, so they changed it back an even kept the true damage!

The point being, Riot cannot go back on a change by saying, "You were right, we were wrong." They have to say "This was a little silly of us and here is why." Which I completely understand.

Rozzeta1 votes

They can actually do that, but they'd need to mention during the release that it is experimental, and might change if live tests perform poorly. That automatically makes it Riot's choice to keep it or revert it. It'd seem it's their call, regardless if true or not. Unfortunately whenever they do things, they tend to have a "better than you" approach as a result of having a masters degree on Game Balancing in Harvard, or something. THAT's the reason why they can't backtrack. They need to stop presenting every change as the only panacea for problems that may or may not have existed in the first place.

Electric Buyers2 votes

Well the difference there being, that people don't usually react to numbers from test results like Riot does. They react to being one shot, one time, in one game... for whatever reason. If any company worked with the experimental route, nothing would get done.

Leetri2 votes

Negativity bias. You don't remember the 10 games where you killed them just fine, but you remember that 1 single game where they kicked your ass.

SwiftKitten8811 votes

yeah i miss 50% win rate Nidalee , top and mid, and 48% win rate nid support. a balanced champ in THREE lanes.. good both AD and AP, can go tank or full damage.

extremely balanced champ

and then they throw her into the jungle and all hell breaks lose.

she gets nerfs for 2 years straight in a row with no compensation buffs anywhere along the lines..

her mid, top, and support win rates win rates all drop below 25% before being completely removed from the statistics altogether

and now her jungle win rate is at 46%. dipping below 40 at lower elos.

i would give ANYTHING to be able to play my favorite champion in lanes again.

i miss the ability to lock in nidalee before i even called a lane. i miss nidalee not being hated by 90% of the population.

riot WHY did you change my main. and why after 2 years have you still completely ignored every request to make nid even remotely playable in lanes anymore.

goign from 3 balanced lanes to 4 balanced lanes is a great thing... goign from 3 balanced lanes to 1 completely broken lane is failure.

and i know riot will never allow nidalee to lane again because the latest nerf to her pounce reset hit her laning harder than ANY nerf that has come before that. quit trying to balance her jungle.. you have been trying for 2 years.. it isn't goign to work.. bring her back to where she was balanced in LANE and then try to figure out a way to LET her jungle withing destroying her lanes.. and without breaking her in the jungle.

LA Losty8 votes

Well getting oneshot/twoshot by a spear like the old Nidalee mid could wasnt much fun to play against. She would just sit super far away and throw spears, if one of them hit you would have to back off or you might even die instantly.

Hige7 votes

Because going back adds nothing of value, instead it renders hours of work useless, l understand that a lot of people feel attached to a lot of things but this isn't your teddy bear you hug at night, this is a product with a very specific direction and if they think Leona could use some improvements it's not because they spin a roulette and the needle pointed at her, it's because of a surmount of data that shows Leona as a potential successful ground to work on.

If a building ends up being a little crooked you don't demolish it down, you fix it with stucco and whatnot because demolishing it is a bigger expense than repairing it, in this case they do it with a button of course but what about the time, effort and money they invest? do you think changes to champion just spurt out from a cloud?

Either way, as a company, going back on your work is an awful strategy, you gotta keep pushing forward and Riot is very good at fixing their mistakes, the only problem is that it takes time and good management of resources.

rossmorr2 votes

{quoted}

Because going back adds nothing of value, instead it renders hours of work useless, l understand that a lot of people feel attached to a lot of things but this isn't your teddy bear you hug at night, this is a product with a very specific direction and if they think Leona could use some improvements it's not because they spin a roulette and the needle pointed at her, it's because of a surmount of data that shows Leona as a potential successful ground to work on.

If a building ends up being a little crooked you don't demolish it down, you fix it with stucco and whatnot because demolishing it is a bigger expense than repairing it, in this case they do it with a button of course but what about the time, effort and money they invest? do you think changes to champion just spurt out from a cloud?

Either way, as a company, going back on your work is an awful strategy, you gotta keep pushing forward and Riot is very good at fixing their mistakes, the only problem is that it takes time and good management of resources.

it's more like me having a perfectly good building, demolishing it with the intention of building a better building, my new building turns out worse, and I have the ability to time travel back and stop myself from demolishing the original. I am obviously going to take the time travel option. (even if i still lose all my resources i would rather have the original)

Hige3 votes

you can't time travel in real life, that's the point, all of you think that this kind of stuff is plausible just because Riot's product is virtual but the company itself is real and the cost of rolling back stuff on EVERY company is huge but of course, you can't ask for kids to understand basic management terms.

rossmorr2 votes

{quoted}

you can't time travel in real life, that's the point, all of you think that this kind of stuff is plausible just because Riot's product is virtual but the company itself is real and the cost of rolling back stuff on EVERY company is huge but of course, you can't ask for kids to understand basic management terms.

You clearly misunderstood me, and you clearly aren't entirely familiar with the way programming works.

I was being hypothetical, you can't time travel in real life but lets just say you could flip a switch and the previous building comes back with no extra cost... you would do that and so would i. With programming, riot can just copy and paste back in their old code (so no extra cost) and the old champion is back, yes the resources would still have been spent, you would still lose those, but at least you would still have the good champion (or building in your metaphor)

Hige2 votes

There is always a cost, in a company you need to AT LEAST break even (50%) but if you rollback the loss is absolute (100%), you lost resources and work that you could have used in something else but more importantly, since Riot works in batches, you loose time and opportunities, if they roll Mordekaiser back completely his issues (remember that they don't choose it at random, there's data backing up their decisions) will remain in place until the next juggernaut update, you can figure out when that's gonna be and prioritizing him will set other champions back but even more importantly, what about the things that became satisfactory? will you just loose any and all progress just because of community outcry? there are SOME wins on morde's rework whether the community sees them or not.

Also, given the chance that you miss the mark again, then what? roll back again? this is how you break a company, because nothing would ever get done and because essentially you would be ignoring statistics

Now saying that Riot doesn't do roll backs in 100% false as well, you can see it on Vel'koz, even though his ult is back to his old funcionality, his numbers are adecuated to his current power level, this is how you bring stuff back while at the same time going forward.

What entails a good champion to you isn't necessarily valuable when data screams the contrary, because remember that the balance in league of legends is done holistically and not per individual champion.

rossmorr2 votes

{quoted}

There is always a cost, in a company you need to AT LEAST break even (50%) but if you rollback the loss is absolute (100%), you lost resources and work that you could have used in something else but more importantly, since Riot works in batches, you loose time and opportunities, if they roll Mordekaiser back completely his issues (remember that they don't choose it at random, there's data backing up their decisions) will remain in place until the next juggernaut update, you can figure out when that's gonna be and prioritizing him will set other champions back but even more importantly, what about the things that became satisfactory? will you just loose any and all progress just because of community outcry? there are SOME wins on morde's rework whether the community sees them or not.

Also, given the chance that you miss the mark again, then what? roll back again? this is how you break a company, because nothing would ever get done and because essentially you would be ignoring statistics

Now saying that Riot doesn't do roll backs in 100% false as well, you can see it on Vel'koz, even though his ult is back to his old funcionality, his numbers are adecuated to his current power level, this is how you bring stuff back while at the same time going forward.

What entails a good champion to you isn't necessarily valuable when data screams the contrary, because remember that the balance in league of legends is done holistically and not per individual champion.

I agree with a lot of things you are saying, yes there is always a cost, however in the world of a game development company the cost of a role back is extremely minimal, basically insignificant both in terms of time and cash.

I also accept that rolling back changes means that morde will inevitably need changed again thus taking attention away from other champions that need it, however in the current state he is in this is the case anyway, he is going to need another rework.

What this means is at this point we have to decide between two things, rolling back the changes at a minimal cost, or keeping things as they are. Now i'm not sure what data you are referring to but i advise you to look at the play rate and win rate on these graphs http://www.leagueofgraphs.com/champions/stats/mordekaiser The juggernaut update happened in August last year, as you can see, it has been a nightmare in terms of both balance and play rates for mordekaiser.

Therefore the data i'm referring to would suggest that mordekaiser changes should be reverted immediately, you don't necessarily then have to focus on him straight away but yes, you are right, riot probably had data which informed mordekaiser should have been on top of the rework pile.

If you miss the mark too many times, yes you will lose business, just like you lose business if you follow the path of not reverting on your rework for long enough for there to be a community backlash (yes the backlash would be minimal due to the small playerbase of mordekaiser but it would be existent). There is no winning in either situation unless you actually get it right. The roll back just plasters things up a little until you can make a good change.

Also i accept that riot does do roll backs i'm just saying that as a general rule they seem to value their ego above admitting an error and as a result these errors usually either take a long time to roll back or a change doesn't happen.

Thanks for a valid contribution, in your future ones maybe don't just assume a member of the community is a "kid" because there is a good chance that when someone posts something, they actually have an opinion of it for a reason and you should be respectful of them regardless of their age or how valid you think their opinion is.

Hige3 votes

First and foremost I want you to know that I don't think you specifically are a kid, your answers show insight and I can respect that, I talk about kids because as you can see the only one willing to discuss stuff is you and this happens way too often in this forum, kudos to you though.

The data I refer to is bigger than the info you'll find in any API oriented website, because while riot has the API showing most numbers it has been stated countless times that we as customer don't get ALL the data that riot manages everyday, specially not the one linked to game balance.

I'll be talking about morde because it seems like a good cornerstone for this discussion.

Rolling back morde will result in several outcomes of which Riot probably tries to actively avoid 2:

  1. People attached to the things new morde does will backslash, things like dragon ghost or healing from his W or his new 3 hit Q are things some people like because let's be honest old morde was seriously flat, you had to unleash everything and then proceed to go back without a dash... currently you must time your skills speed yourself with W and build up momentum for your Q, also, the current morde is way more fair than the old one, remember they tweaked morde's second bar.

  2. people will realize that the current state of the game leaves morde in an even worse spot and the outcry for a change will be HUGE, mostly because the game has changed without considering morde's old kit but it does considers the new, this is what I mean when I say that Riot balances their champion holistically, everything is interconnected or at least every champion is considered specially when introducing and removing items and features (rift herald, elemental dragons, etc).

So as you can see, morde cannot be rolled back without some impressive repercussions meaning that work will have to be poured into him no matter what, any and all change creates agency and you have to manage it properly.

Now you'd probably think that this is the case because riot let things get to this point in time and that a quick roll back would have sufficed but sadly there's no way of knowing these kind of stuff in a quick way, when morde was released he was really powerful and picked across all elos, he was way too much on one side but it was on the good side, he shook things around and people were flocking to play him.

You may argue then that they overdid the nerfs but to be honest, 48% win rate is not garbage, Corki was at 43% winrate last patch, and currently he's sitting at 45%. Balance is achieved when a champion hovers around 50%, 2% up or down is perfectly fine, so balance wise he's in a good spot. So he's balanced but lacks pick rate, this isn't inherent to the champion itself but to the champion pool available for top, statistically you CAN win half of your match ups, but then you have champions like Irelia who have a whooping 54% win rate... Riot can't buff morde to 54% win rate, all they need to do is to balance top picks down.

TL:DR: they can't rollback morde because it requires even more work and either way he'll be even far behind and the outcry will be bigger.

Sire Hippington6 votes

Very true. People wouldn't loose their shits on every change if it wasn't given that the change stays no matter how it pans out. The comunity(certainly includeing myself) Would be way more relaxed with even more experimental changes like project-adc-kaiser if we knew the changes might get rewerted if the experiment fails.

Another thing are changes that are/were right at the given time but lost their purpose due to system-/item-/other-changes, like shys bonus damage vs junglemonsters. Back when she recived that feat, she was a beast at top while struggling in the jungle. Buffing her damage vs monsters to help her jungle without breaking top was a good call back at the time. But with sated, jungle shy became a monster and recived many nerfs - but for some reason her bonus damage vs minions stayed so she now sucks hard top and only works in the jungle because of absurd cleartimes while her kit overall is lackluster. So to put it short, instead of pulling a changes that outlived it's usefullness, riot decided to keep that and dumpster the rest of the kit...

BloodyTompon5 votes

Never revert? Velkoz

Athenes Lulu5 votes

If they remove utility scalings based on AP ON SUPPORTS, and that they realized that it was a complete mistake... that would be great.

ShaolinHeart4 votes

Short answer: I feel that people are skeptical because Riot has a tendency to make a change, and then if it works well , they go on and on about how great it was for a couple months, but if the changes doesn't go well. they pretend it never happened and move on with their lives and leave a champion in a broken pile of trash and outright refuse to acknowledge that they broke it.

Weathered4 votes

R Fiora I Fiora P Fiora

Fondling Gems3 votes

Mord isn't the best example. I agree they could have reverted the changes but either way he was being iceboxed until he got a big update. Riot mentioned that they are now trying to make champs like mord complete overhauls instead of changing 1-2 abilities.

kile14713 votes

The issue isn't that they didn't immediately address his problems, it's that they disenfranchised the people who liked him before the rework. If he's not going to be healthy or balanceable either way why leave him in the state that his core playerbase dislikes?

The Deckowner3 votes

Fiora she used to be my most played champion, now I never play her.

zlumpy7 votes

To be fair she did used to a walking ult with very little interaction from other players to play against, but yeah new fiora....not to impressed with the direction they went there.

General Levi3 votes

They did revert the riven changes they did a long time ago, tose changes would have utterly broke her, even box box said it was a terrible idea

Apocalypsic21 votes

[{quoted}](name=General Levi,realm=NA,application-id=3ErqAdtq,discussion-id=bZZN8QMu,comment-id=0006,timestamp=2016-06-17T18:50:33.548+0000)

They did revert the riven changes they did a long time ago, tose changes would have utterly broke her, even box box said it was a terrible idea

Retracting something on the PBE is something they do all the time.

They're talking about Live here.

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